Workflow to validate if Date & Time falls within a range and avoid double booking?

Hi Bimi,

How do you intend to submit the form "via" the workflow? Any JS you add on the form will only be executed at the client side but workflows wont trigger the JS unless there is a user interaction.

Regards,

Shrini

Hi Bimi,

The post above "Prevent Double booking" probably does the same check on the WF to prevent double booking. I havent gone into the details of it, but assuming your case would be similar but not exactly same?

In your case I assume if the form is doing the check then you may have to repeat the steps again in the workflow to be sure, but when we do any check in the workflow its a delayed action, i.e the user may not know if his request his successful or not until the workflow does the check and somehow notifies the user (through emails?) whether the booking is successful or not which is not a very ideal User experience.

In your current setup I am assuming you must be checking for the double booking in JS and that should occur at the very end just before the record gets saved into the DB, so if 2 users open at the very same time but 1st user saves it earlier, then when the 2nd user is trying to save it the JS will anyways do a fresh check on the validation and error out? Is this not the case? 

Regards,

Shrini

Hi Bimi,

I haven't seen your code so cant really comment, but in theory when any user tries to save the entire saving process including checking for the duplicate through javscript should hardly take 1 or max 2 secs, so the probability of another user saving at the exact 1-2 sec window would be highly unlikely. Even then doing a double check by using your workflow should be okay as well. Its just more defensive. But in your workflow what do you do when there is a duplicate? Do you email the user back and tell them its not successful?

Where are you stuck in your workflow, from a very high level view of the workflow link it appears as though he is checking the main list (meeting rooms) and may be adding  a filter for the same room in question and just loops through records where start time is in between the start and end date. This would at least give him all the records that are clashing. The logic seems okay at a high level, where are you stuck though?

Regards,

Shrini

But in your workflow what do you do when there is a duplicate?
Do you email the user back and tell them its not successful?

Yes, the workflow needs to email the user asking to select different dates in the form.
Now, the keypoint is that the Validation Procoess needs to re-run with the new selected dates.

To achieve this, the STATE MACHINES needs to be implemented.
The issue with this is that it taked up to 5 - 10min for the worflow to go through the sate machines
It is a default timing and you cannot make it quicker ...

Now, within the 5-10 span another user could potetially claim the new selected date because he started it earlier.

Anyway need to think this through, if the WF validation is really needed??

Besides that, each request needs to be approved by the manager.
Which also means, each request with the dates gets recorded to the list but as such being reserved.

Hi Bimi,

Apologies trying to balance quite a few things here so not going into very detail. I might question that we could design this in a different way.

To achieve this, the STATE MACHINES needs to be implemented.
The issue with this is that it taked up to 5 - 10min for the worflow to go through the sate machines
It is a default timing and you cannot make it quicker ... 

You mentioned you are using State Machines? Why do you use that ? State machines will run when the time job runs and that will run how it is scheduled in your SP farm. It could be 5 mins or more. Why would you want to use state machine ? You might want to start processing when the item changes and not use state machine?

regards,

Shrini

HI Bimi,

Please refer to my earlier approach I replied to one of your questions I think the design can be a bit different ..

I just saw this reply  .. if you issue is just so that WF is trying to select the same row which the form has entered, you can add an extra check to see if the booking was made by the same person and then "not" consider this as an existing booking?

Regards,

Shrini

My workflow is about booking a car... which is similar to booking a conference room.
Yes, that is my inttention: simply to ensure that no double booking occures.

The JS validation does the front-ent validation and the workflow does the back-end validation.
Now, either I change the query to rule out ID which are raised by CurrentUser or not to include wf validation at all?

Just to visualise the process, see below:

Attention:

+ the JS validation is a front-end validation which is triggered when filling in the form.
+ the WORKFLOW VALIDATION step is a questionmark whether it is really required etc.

Let's take two scenarios into consideration:

1) Perfect Scenario (ignore the Workflow Validation step in this case):

- User1 requests a car on 25/11/2018 10:00 - 26/11/2018 13:00

- The request gets validated via JS and finds no overlap

- The request is now is now pending for approval
- User2 requests a car on 25/11/2018 15:00 until 25/11/2018 16:30  (which is overlapping the above)

- The JS validation of course picks it up and shows the alert message

- The user is forced to select a different date / time range!

2) Worst Scenario (ignore the Workflow Validation step in this case):

- User1 and User2 submit a request at similar timing which is a low chance but not un-avoidable!
- User1 selects 25/11/2018 10:00 - 26/11/2018 13:00
- User2 selects 25/11/2018 15:00 until 25/11/2018 16:30 

- Both requests go through without any issues because the JS validation (due timing) does not find duplicate

- Both requests will go for approval request and when they get approved = there is an overlap / doublebooking

Now this is where I thought, to implement a WORKFLOW VALIDATION step as seen in the picture (red dot). This step would then go through the list and compare the selected times, and this is where the User2 requests would be thrown back due to double booking as from what I could analyse.

When the workflow identifies a doublebooking > it informs the user to edit the form and resubmit with new date/time. For such action, a STATE MACHINE is required which can send a process back to a previous step, thus is to re-validate the request.

Or maybe... the state machine is not required because when user re-submits the request, the JS validation checks the existing entries?!

HINT:

The LOOP action contains a query and in there I will have to add (if current user is not equal created by) so that it ignores the user's fresh request otherwise it will always pick up a double booking!!

UPDATE

I have now completed the workflow as following:

1) The form validates the selected dates via the JS Validation Script
2) The workflow goes through a validation check to ensure there is no double entry in the list via Query (Current User != Created by)

3) The requests will be pending for approval requests (may add a wait until XY days and then automatically decline if it exceeds the selected date)

4) Notify the user when it has been approved or rejected and the workflow is then complete.

5) Review the request if the workflow validates a double booking and delete the request if user does not respond after 5 days.

I did not introduce StateMachines but rather in-one-line workflow.

Yes, that would be the case: to exclude the current user at the query step.

As per the State Machine, I think I will not implement it but use as a run-down flow.
When the WF finds a duplicate > it sends email to user asking to edit the form and resubmit with new date/time.
If there is no respond within 5 days then the workflow will delete the request and end the process.